


Fulfillment

by Tierfal



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Established Relationship, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-22
Updated: 2013-04-22
Packaged: 2017-12-09 04:36:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/770044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roy is working late, and the very dear young man he has committed his life to is having none of it.</p>
<p>[Referential spoilers for Brotherhood.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fulfillment

**Author's Note:**

> Brief lulls at work plus stressy brain equals writing faster than I can edit and always forgetting to reserve any time for answering a bunch of truly wonderful comments on previous fics.
> 
> I suck. You guys rock. ♥ I hope you enjoy another dose of schmoopy!Roy. XD

“What the hell are you slaving away at?” Ed asks. “You never work this hard on anything that isn’t part of your master plan. Is it for Captain Hawkeye’s birthday? I keep _telling_ you, you just go to that gun shop she likes and ask the guy for one of the two things she doesn’t already have, and then she appreciates it way more than that weird, floofy silk scarf she now feels obligated to wear sometimes so you won’t figure out she hates it.”

“She loves that scarf,” Roy says, pausing in his perusal of this miserable report to pinch the bridge of his nose between thumb and fingertip. “Two years later, it’s still incredibly versatile, and it complements her complexion beautifully.”

When he winches his eyes open to assess Ed’s response, his faithful, doting lover does not appear to be impressed.

“I dunno what part of ‘the woman digs guns’ you don’t understand,” Ed says, “but whatever. What the crap is this, then?”

Roy digs a knuckle into his eye; he swears he can hear the eyeball grinding against the back of the socket. “Work.”

There is a rather lengthy silence, and then there is a light pressure against Roy’s forehead—which, he discovers as he startles back from it, is the back of Ed’s hand.

“That’s two nights in a row,” Ed says, touching Roy’s cheek next. “Are you sick or something?”

“Only in the head, as far as I know,” Roy says, gently catching his wrist. “I’m nearly done.”

Ed twists his forearm free and steps back to watch Roy critically. “It’s almost midnight.”

“Is it?” Funny—well, ‘funny’—how all the bleary hours of pounding head and tiny text and crinkling pages blur together. “Go on up to bed; I’ll be there in just a minute.”

“Bull _shit_ you will,” Ed says. “You’re coming now.”

“Edward,” Roy says, “my dearest, my most beloved, my better half, the blazing sun of my universe and the purpose of my life… butt out.”

Ed snickers.  “Yeah, fuck your shit.  C’mon.  If you’re real nice, I’ll cuddle ’til you fall asleep.”

Ed frequently professes to believe that cuddling is the biggest waste of time since writing lists of the damages “that got fixed in the end anyway, with barely any alchemy marks on ’em”. On the very first such occasion, it took Roy a grand total of two and a half seconds to determine that the violent protestations are meant to hide a slightly desperate desire to be held.

“You drive a hard bargain,” Roy says.

“I’ll show you a _hard_ bargain,” Ed says, baring his teeth.

Well, that gets Roy’s attention in a hurry.  “Isn’t it a bit—late?”

Ed’s grin should be outlawed as a weapon of undue destruction.  “Too tired, old man?”

“That sounded rather like a challenge,” Roy says, blinking vigorously and skimming the next few lines a bit faster.

“Nah,” Ed says.  “That’s an ultimatum.  Your ass is either in bed before mine or kicked from here to Creta.”

“That would be helpful, actually,” Roy says.  “I’d be delighted to discuss this tariff discrepancy with them in person, when I can pull on a glove and rub my fingers together when they start shunting me from one disinterested council member to the next.”

“You talk a good game,” Ed says, and the movement draws Roy’s eyes as he cocks his hip and sets a hand on it, “but I dunno if you have the balls to back it up.”

Roy struggles to keep a straight face.  “You know very well that I have an extremely fine set o—”

“Come upstairs and prove it,” Ed says.

This is the sort of dilemma that could kill a man in minutes—does he give in and choose beautiful, beautiful sex with Ed; or does he continue, stalwartly, slowly, and painstakingly, as his eyes burn and his brain stumbles, to defuse this diplomatic time-bomb?

Ed sighs, shoves his hands into his pockets, shuffles over, and leans against the corner of the desk.

“Roy,” he says, softly, “c’mon.  I’m exhausted, and you’re practically dead on your feet—well, dead on your ass, at the moment—and you’re gonna go blind again if you keep reading all damn night long.”

It is a trial to deny him anything—which, come to think of it, is presumably why they have six different kinds of ice cream in their freezer.

Roy draws a deep breath.  “This is important.”

“That’s what you always say,” Ed says.  “You know what else is important?  Your health.  Your happiness.”  He glowers.  “ _Our_ bed not being fucking cold every fucking night because you’re down here fucking _brooding_ over the minutiae of the government.”

“I have a vested interest in the state of the state,” Roy says.

“I noticed,” Ed says.  “So here’s me, laying down the law.  Roy _fucking_ Mustang, if I have to knock you out and drag you upstairs by the ankle and field the accusations of domestic abuse from the public and the tacit approval from your team, then _I fucking will_.  Don’t tempt me to do it just for fun.”

Roy pauses.  Roy gathers all of his remaining brain cells and applies them to the task of fast-paced strategic thinking.  Roy considers and reconsiders his priorities.  Roy steeples his hands and looks at his lover over his fingertips.

“You,” he says, “are a tyrant.”

“I prefer ‘dictator’,” Ed says.  “As in, ‘You’re going to suck my _dictator_ unless you want to sleep on the couch for a week.’”

Roy gazes at him for a long moment while things burst and bloom and spiral in his chest.

“What?” Ed asks, scowling in his uncertainty.

“I love you,” Roy says.  “That’s what.”

“You’re crazy,” Ed says.  “It’s probably the sleep deprivation catching up.  Will you come the fuck to bed already?”

It took Roy a while to realize that Ed’s bewildering obsession with Roy’s health and well-being wasn’t micromanagement.  It took Roy a while to remember that Ed was parent and mentor and sole protector, for years on end, to the most important person in his universe.  It took Roy a while to understand that fussing over someone is how Ed demonstrates absolute devotion.

It’s funny how romantic _come the fuck to bed already_ sounds when you know it means _I love you, too_.

Roy’s back creaks, cracks, pops, and throbs more than a little as he stands.  Ed gets a chance to blink twice before Roy steps forward and takes both of his hands.

“Yes,” Roy says.  “Always yes, for you.”

Ed eyes him.  “You really do need to sleep.”

Roy flashes the good old roguish grin.  “…with you.”

Ed raises his eyebrows, but a twitch of his mouth betrays him.  “Real cute.  Quit stalling.”  He knits their fingers together and starts hauling, and Roy doesn’t resist.  “Creta will still be full of shit in the morning.”

And Roy’s head will still be full of questions, and his heart will still be full of Ed.

“True,” he says.  “What would you do?  Other than walk across the border and start decking anyone who looked like a diplomat, I mean.”

Ed smirks over one shoulder as they start up the stairs; the way that turning his head makes his ponytail snap like a ribbon will never stop making Roy’s whole body go tight.  “How’s that different from your super-macho ignition glove threat?”

“I would like to teach you one of my favorite words, my dear,” Roy says.  “Say it with me, now: _subtlety_.  S-U-B—”

“ _You be_ careful,” Ed growls, squeezing his hand meaningfully, “or I’ll rescind the cuddling offer.  Don’t think I won’t.”

“I shall be positively angelic from this moment on,” Roy says.

Ed laughs—probably aiming for bitingly sardonic, landing somewhere between gleeful and bright.  “You’re _especially_ lame when you’ve got a sleep debt.”

Roy holds the bedroom door, and Ed rolls his eyes.  “My dear, sweet hypocrite,” Roy says, “as a demonstration of my undying affection, I will tactfully choose not to mention the hundred-thousand times you’ve stayed up until four in the morning reading by a penlight and then spent several hours the next morning babbling incoherently about advanced theory into your coffee mug.”

“Bastard,” Ed says contentedly.  “Saying it by saying you’re not going to say it still counts.”

“Apophasis,” Roy says.

“Gesundheit,” Ed says.

“It’s a rhetorical device,” Roy says.

“So’s your mom,” Ed says.

The timing is perfect for Roy to scoop him up and sling him onto the bed.

“You _scoundrel_ ,” Ed gasps, scrabbling up onto his knees with a feral grin, hair hanging in his face and eyes alight and Roy doesn’t care how late it is—

“And to think,” Roy says, hastily unbuttoning his wrinkled shirt to shrug it off before he climbs up onto the mattress, “all of my reprobation is _yours_.”

Ed has wriggled out of his trousers and kicked them off the edge of the bed in three and a half seconds flat.  He folds his arms behind his head and twists his hips up towards Roy.

“Equivalent exchange, General,” he says.

Roy leans in to breathe against his jaw, his throat, his lips, his cheek.  “Equivalent exchange, my love.”

Ed wraps both arms around his neck, gives a low whine that jolts _straight_ to Roy’s groin, and snaps his hips up hard.  “You gonna go the fuck to sleep after this?”

“Only because you asked so nicely,” Roy says.

Ed snorts.

So Roy shuts him up.

In the afterglow, with Ed’s arms curled almost-too-tight around him, he thinks—in a faint, floaty sort of way—that Creta and its diplomats can go hang, because he is precisely where he belongs.


End file.
